Teamwork and understanding.

Last thursday was a big day for our class in ES11 (Engineering Science 11). It was our oral comprehensive exam. As usual, it had a twist. Only one from the group had to report and his score will be the group’s score.

We were already outside and any minute one of our names will be called. We were laughing at the lobby, as we tried to fight the nightmare of carrying the group’s grade, as opposed to showing the feeling of the unnerving situation we were in. The other group has finished their report and Owen, my special groupmate since we named our group “Where is Owen?” for his long absence, was called. We cheered him up.

So there was just the three of us. We tried to talk about happy things. Feeling the gloomy ambience.

15 minutes.

Our professor called us to enter the reporting room. We maintained the jovial atmosphere amidst the formality of the situation. Again, we cheered Owen’s spirit.

He reported the solution to the problem, as if it was just an ordinary problem and burden you have. I know that he tried to answer it with his utmost capabilities, but he made wrong assumptions on trying to solve the problem. His solution began to be troublesome when our professor pointed out his error. I also began to be baffled.

After few minutes of mending his solution, our professor finally asked him to stop. He politely asked Owen to leave first the room. That puts again the ‘three’ of us in the room together with our professor.

“This is the bonus round. This is to test your capability to think before you act,” our professor said without emphasis.

“Minsan, we have to be competitive din,” this he said with emphasis and was repated thrice.

“Pag-usapan muna natin,” I was murmuring to my groupmates.

“1…2…” I can hear our professor.

“Pag-usapan muna natin to”

“3… Go!”

The one of my groupmates errandly ran to the ball and put his ring into it. Following him was my another groupmate. Following the bandwagon was me.

I don’t intend to push myself to be the protagonist of the story. It was just an ungrateful situation.

“You didn’t get it.”

When our professor said this, I was not really shocked. I expected it from him.

I had an answer to the bonus round. We could have answered it if the team had just had trust to the team. I was willing to lose for them, but the impulsive action made just left to whole team lost. I wish I could turn back time and blocked my groupmate from getting near the ball. I was not complacent with my answer. I should have been more confident to block them and making the team win.

I tried to hide my anxiety. I was obnoxious that time. I just tried to hide it. But rest has already come upon.